As soon as you hit level 60, start doing the daily quests to unlock Legion Storage slots from Mr. Camaraderie in Rome. Legion Storage is free (vs. Merc Rooms, for which you need a license) and will come in handy if you want to recruit Legionmercs. They also overlap nicely with some of the Diary dailies. You can find these quests in the quest log's Sub Quest > Repeat section.

Start working on titles as soon as you can. You pretty much can start as soon as you leave the n00b zone, around level 3. Titles give you buffs and can be used daily. More titles = more daily buffs. You can start Title quests from the quest log's Sub Quest > General section.

You can start Legion prerequisite quest lines at level 10 and start recruiting Legion mercs at level 70. You can find these quests in the quest log's Sub Quest > Legion section. Some of the legion mercs you can recruit at level 70 are not bad at all. See Shaolin Legion for details.

Join a guild! Guilds and nations are awesome and full of helpful and friendly players. There are exceptions, but most guilds in Atlantica Online are fairly laid back and will let you join, even if you're not the most social butterfly or have 6 hours/day to play.

Get a house if you can (level 80+). Houses are expensive for new players, but they offer free Merc storage and other perks. Compared to Merc room licenses, houses are a bargain!

You can trade or resell almost anything in Atlantica Online, including most equipment and weapons. Even mercenaries (if you haven't used the Sealed Orb, which recruits them to your team). There is good money in doing Mercenary Recruitment quests and selling the Sealed Orbs on the Market (or My Store or in trade chat). You can find Mercenary Recruitment quest lines in the quest log's Sub Quest > Recruit section. Also see our Mercenary Recruiting category.

As with your main character, try to pick mercenaries that fit in with your desired play style. Once you reach level 50, you will be able to recruit a full team (formation) of 8 mercenaries in addition to your main character. It is a good idea to keep this in mind when you make decisions about the mercenaries you recruit in the early game by thinking about what you want your formation to look like by the time you have a full team.

Not all mercenaries that you have the opportunity to recruit will fit into your formation. It is up to you to decide whether they fit in to your style of play or not. For example, if you wish to deal damage to all of your enemies at once, you should consider the beast trainer for her beast summon skill and a witch for her meteor strike skill. On the other hand, if you prefer picking off opponents one at a time you might consider a mix of sword and arrow using mercenaries. For more ideas, see formations.

Research a mercenary's total cost of ownership (TCO) before deciding to recruit him or her. Some mercenaries can be obtained for free from a Mercenary Selection Summon Marble while leveling, but the Skills for that merc are super expensive, or maybe can't even be leveled any way other than paying Atlas Ore. Each mercenary's page has an Assessment section which discusses the Mercenary's usefulness, as well has his/her TCO.

A character earns one skill point each time they gain a level. It can be tempting to use every skill book that you come across and to teach your characters every skill available to them, but this is usually not a good idea, unless you have planned it out this way. Check the mercenary page of the game journal (Game Info menu > Class) and consider which skills you would like to have and which you can do without.

The two main approaches to raising skills is to either select a few skills and pump them to the highest level (level 60), or try to have all of them raised to only a small degree. If you choose to raise all of them then many spells will turn out to be rather weak later in the game, but this may or may not be acceptable to you depending on the skill. It is widely preferred to choose to pump at least one skill to maximum level for most characters.

Keep in mind that it is possible to reorganize your skills later by decreasing them using a Skill Decrease Book, but this will inevitably turn out to be very expensive, since you need one decrease book for each level of reduction in each skill. Therefore, the importance of planning how to spend your skills from the beginning is re-emphasized as a means of saving money later in the game.

In your travels you'll come across Growth Vials, which can be found in Commodity Boxes. These help you raise statistics at the cost of Bonus Points (you get bonus points as you level). It's in your best interest to buy and use them whenever you can. It is a good strategy, to give your hero all available stats, because the battle (normal combat) ends as soon as he dies. So if he/she has got more health, then he/she will survive a bit longer. A simple and inexpensive way to get Growth Vials I and II as a new player or character is to farm Commodity Box I and II by killing monsters. These boxes drop skill books for your mercenaries or Growth Vials.

As you travel the world, make sure you stop at every town you see. You only need to enter a town, area, or dungeon floor once to get it's map info. Having map info for all towns and dungeons will be very useful as you progress in the game. For example, if you are working on a quest that asks you to return to a dungeon repeatedly, you could either walk to the dungeon every time or teleport. Because of this, it may be worth your while to visit every level of a dungeon during your first visit, because you will then be able to choose the level you want to teleport to. You will be covering a lot of ground later on in the game, and teleporting from place to place will save you a lot of time. Note that for teleporting, you will need a Teleportation license.

As long as you are doing your quest you should be fine in the beginning for money. If you don't intend on being a crafter right off the bat. Selling your goods below what the fixed price is for materials in the Market is another good way to make cash. You really want to try to have a nice nest egg of cash in bank before 35. As that's usually when most people start to feel the pinch of having to buy armor/weapons for all their mercenaries. Later on crafting and betting on fights at the arena[Arena betting has been removed from the game] is a good way to make money. Also instead of betting you could join the competition, which is a good way to earn titles and some money (if you win a match in the Free League, you will get some coins, which can be sold for money).

A great way to make money once your a bit more traveled is to keep an eye out in the notice window, just above the chat box, in here 'Rumors' appear about stuff like Managers Scroll and Repair Stone, if you travel to where it says they are being sold, then talk to a resident there, e.g. Traveling Girl/Chinese Peddler/Arabian Merchant etc. and buy what they're selling (Takes 100% Will, so might need to wait a bit), then you can sell it on the market for a lot more than you bought it. For example, at the time of writing, you can buy a Managers Scroll (V) for 10,000, but sell it on for 340,000.

Will is a special bar that sits at top of screen. It refills slowly (1% will every 6 seconds) and is one rather important thing to keep track of. To see what you can do with it, please read the main article.

Don't be afraid to group. It's actually quite beneficial. Unlike some other MMOs, Atlantica Online gives you benefits from grouping even when not killing together in the same location. Such a group is called a long distance party (LDP) and you'll often see guild or nation members posting "lf for ldp" in chat.

The mercenary with the lowest level in your group will receive bonus experience on top of what they already earn. Killing while in a party generate a Small Experience Book for every 100 experience shared in the group and this books are worth 100 experience when used for one member of the group.[These books no longer drop as of Dec 2013 - but players can keep/use the ones they already have] Ten of these books and 10,000 gold can be given to Goncourt in exchange for a Regular Experience Book. While in a group you lose 1 Stamina point every 2 fights if you are in a 2 people group and 1 Stamina every 3 fights if you are in a 3 people party.[Stamina mechanic is no longer present in the game]
It is much easier to complete quests while in a party. If all members of a group have the same quest, they all receive the needed quest item if one of them gets it from looting.

Guard is probably one of the most useful things for long combats or when facing off against a group of flyers when you are mostly melee. Before I jump into it. Let me point out that at most you allowed to use up to 5 of your mercs during any one turn. So you go into a fight with flyers and your melee are the only ones able to move for that turn. Use Guard, it will transfer that merc/hero's turn to someone else that is waiting. Who the turn goes to is based on Action Power, so if your guy was sitting at '-38' at the start of your turn because he attacked last round and got hit by an Action Power draining attack from enemy. Don't count on Guard giving him the chance to attack that round.

Flying enemies cannot be hit directly by meleeattacks. They can only be hit by Magic Skills and Ranged and Magic
attacks. The other thing to take notice of is that if the front line is made up flying units, you can attack the land mobs behind it. Note, that a flying mob can directly fly over your front line to hit any units you have in the middle row. Currently there is one flying mercenary, which is the Witch.

It is possible for additional groups of monsters to join any battle that you are engaged in at any time. If an enemy happens to cross your path whilst you are battling then it will invariably join the fight against you. However, this rarely happens during the earlier parts of the game unless you happen to venture into Shadow Dungeons. In Shadow Dungeons, you will regularly face up to three groups of enemies at once, even if you manage to find a group that appears to be alone.

Death results in a loss of 10% the total gold that you are carrying and a small portion of experience points. Mercenaries also lose experience. Retreating from a fight has the same consequences as death, meaning gold and experience is lost just the same, so sometimes even if another group of enemies appears, it can be a good idea to weigh the situation and keep fighting. However, retreating will reduce resurrection costs if you are convinced that you would end up dead anyway! Also, if you retreat, you won't end up in a town, but you'll be right there where you fought (sometimes it's annoying to run all the way back to the dungeon where you died from the town BUT some may use their death to get a quick teleport to the nearest town without having to go through the entire dungeon).

A Blessing License can protect you from all of the above losses. Blessing Licenses can be bought on the Item Mall and come with some of the Item Mall License Packs, and can also be won from in game events and a few quests.

Beside the two main skills Blessing of Life and Hex of Darkness, a Shaman can learn Brutal Will, which boost the attack, increases accuracy and increases your chance to strike multiple times of one line in your formation. It continuously deals little damage while your people are under its effects, and like I said you lose control of them for the 4 rounds it last. Which means you can't make use of their skills. It's still generally worth the trade off.

Holy Guard is the Monk skill that pretty much makes you resistant to magic. One cast of Holy Guard will remove all the negative effects and place an effect on one line in your formation, making these mercenaries immune to magic. Consider, that no magic works on you. Not even your own Shaman's, Oracle's, or Exorcist's Healing magic. So it's one of those skills that's very useful, but more harmful if misused. A Melee or Magical Hero can be taught a skill for dispelling it. Note that if a mercenary, which is under the effect of Holy Guard, is getting stunned, the effect of Holy Guard is removed, and the mercenary can now be target of magic as well. The Holy Guard skill can be countered by the Guard Dispel skill.

Initially, freezing axe will freeze a single target for one turn, but at later levels it will improve to freeze an entire row of enemies for a turn. In addition, the spell causes damage when it is cast and causes additional damage at the start of each enemy phase.

When an enemy is frozen, it is prevented from taking any action for the duration of the freeze. If any of your characters become frozen, you cannot select them or perform any action with those characters. However, the freeze can be dispelled by using a monksholy guard magic.

The Oracle can cast Seth's will on a row of mercenaries. This skill will heavily increase the action power of each mercenary that is being affected as well as increase the chances of multiple attacks. As the skill increases, the damage of the mercenaries increase. However, the defense of each mercenary gets lowered and takes a Damage Over Time (DoT). The player is unable to move the mercenary that has been affected by Seth's Will as well as the initiating attacks. The mercenary will attack any monsters or players on their own. In addition, this skill is better than Brutal Will, which the shaman casts.

The artilleryman is the only mercenary or hero that is able to cast this skill. It reveals the health of enemies as well as gives a Damage Over Time (DoT). This skill is very useful in lowering the defense of monsters and other players. This skill is a valuable asset to a team since it can help killing a monster or player faster.

The Beast Trainer is the only mercenary that is able to cast this skill. Just like equipping bullets to a gunner or equipping cannonballs to a cannoneer, the Beast Trainer is equipped with summoning monsters (which can be found as drop items of certain monsters or bought at the market). This is an AoE (Area of Effect) that attacks all the monsters or players. As the skill increases, the attack increases. This skill is very useful in AoE builds or killing low-health monsters quickly.

The Exorcist is the only mercenary that is able to cast this skill. It prevents all staff using mercenaries or heroes from using any sort of skill. This skill is very valuable in PvP (Player Vs. Player) since it can prevent healing or the use of Holy Guard or Awakening. It also does a Damage Over Time (DoT).

This skill is utilized by the combination of Dark Seed from the Swordsman and Hex of Darkness from the shaman. It's a very strong Damage Over Time (DoT), and most players use this combination early on in the game or in PvP since the two mercenaries are easy to obtain. How to perform: Use Dark Seed then Hex of Darkness.

This skill can only be used by a combination of hero skills. So, to use this skill, a player must be in a party with another player. Any range hero is able to learn the skill called Chaos Wind, and any melee hero is able to learn the skill called Break Down. The combination of these two skills creates a bigger skill that attacks the monsters or players and gives a DoT. How to perform: Use Chaos Wind then Break Down.